Sanders fired up for crucial New Hampshire battle

Bernie Sanders is taking no chances. On the final day of campaigning, he is crisscrossing the snowy state of New Hampshire in a final push to get the vote out in Tuesday's Democratic primary.

The Granite State should be Sanders's best chance at a first-place finish in the primary contests to elect a candidate to take on Donald Trump in November's presidential election.

Sanders comfortably won New Hampshire in 2016 – taking 15 of the state’s 24 delegates compared with Hillary Clinton’s nine. This time he is chasing a smaller piece of the pie given the high number of candidates in the race.

Nonetheless the latest polls put him ahead. According to the latest CNN/University of New Hampshire poll, published on Monday, 29 per cent of likely primary voters say they back Sanders. Pete Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is second on 22 per cent, with Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, who has been enjoying a resurgence in recent days, fighting for third place.

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Sanders, who suffered a heart attack in October, has maintained a frenetic pace since he left Iowa after the caucuses there last week. Buttigieg emerged the narrow winner of those, but on Monday Sanders called for a partial recanvass of some precincts in the state.

The Vermont senator held four events in New Hampshire on Sunday, with three scheduled on Monday, culminating with a concert hosted by rock band The Strokes on Monday night in the east of the state, with star congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also due to attend.

At a campaign event in Rindge, a rural part of the state near the Massachusetts and Vermont borders, Sanders’s message is clear. “Not only is the whole country looking at New Hampshire, the world is looking at New Hampshire,” he says in his famous New York drawl. “I am here to humbly ask you for your support.”

Familiar notes

His speech hits on familiar themes – a promise to abolish university tuition fees, introduce medicare for all, and ensure that those working 40 hours a week “shouldn’t be living in poverty”.

“We’re going to do more than defeat Donald Trump,” he declares, fist in the air. “We’re going to begin the process of transforming this country,” to take on “the greed of Wall Street, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the prison industrial complex and the entire 1 per cent”.

These are the ideas Sanders has been promulgating for decades, since he was first elected in 1981 as mayor of Burlington, Vermont. The surprise for the Democratic establishment is that they have stuck.

Sanders became disrupter-in-chief during the 2016 campaign after mounting a better-than-expected primary challenge to Hillary Clinton. That battle bitterly divided the Democratic Party and exposed a cleavage between the progressive and moderate wings that still has not been resolved.

Four years later Sanders is back, as fiery as ever, even though many detect a softening of tone since his heart attack.

Clinton’s defeat by Donald Trump was for many die-hard Bernie fans a vindication. Sanders had beaten Clinton in the primary contests in Michigan and Wisconsin, swing states that were ultimately won by Trump, helping to deliver him victory on election night.

Despite the sharp differences in policy between Sanders and Trump, their supporters overlap in many ways. Both men appeal to a section of male, white America that feels left behind by globalisation, with both politicians putting their opposition to global trade deals at the centre of their economic policy.

They also attract a particularly loyal base. Just as Trump’s supporters have stuck with him since his election, Sanders’s are a devoted bunch. Monday’s New Hampshire poll show that 42 per cent of Sanders’s supporters are committed to their candidate, twice as much as his Democratic rivals can claim, though this could become problematic for Sanders later in the campaign when building a broader coalition is essential.

Tight Clinton win

Sanders’s ability to attract a section of Trump supporters is something that could be relevant in states such as New Hampshire.

Clinton won New Hampshire in the 2016 election – but only just. She won the state of 1.3 million people by a tiny 0.4 per cent of the vote, the tightest margin of any state except Michigan.

The Trump campaign is eyeing the possibility of winning back New Hampshire in November. The president was due to hold a campaign rally here on Monday night, with supporters lining up in the city of Manchester hours in advance. Trump's daughter Ivanka also travelled to the state with vice-president Mike Pence on Monday, where she attended a "Cops for Trump" event ahead of the president's rally.

As Democratic candidates make their last-minute pitches to voters ahead of Tuesday’s primaries, all are united on one issue – the need to beat Donald Trump in November.

After a difficult week for Democrats following the chaotic, delayed Iowa caucuses results and the acquittal of the president in his impeachment trial, the issue of electability is emerging as the primary issue as candidates try to sell their candidacy to a Democratic electorate desperate for change.